Move over management: We are all leaders now?

Abstract

There is widespread debate within critical management studies (CMS) as to the possibility of introducing CMS principles and ideas into organizational life. There is similarly a critique of its potential to replace the hegemony of `mainstream' business school thinking with an alternative hegemonic practice. In this article we use a reflexive analysis of our involvement as critical thinkers within the delivery of leadership-development programmes to consider these debates and explore CMS perspectives with participants. Our initial attempts were naive, but a more nuanced understanding given by theorizing our own practices offers some ways of avoiding the substitution of one hegemony with another. Although working as critical thinkers within mainstream programmes will always be problematic, we suggest that using a dialogical approach in leadership training programmes is one way of struggling with the inherent difficulties, while introducing participants to different ways of theorizing their worlds.